Hope Clicks Eternal – The Cleveland Browns

A Canadian man-child of indeterminate age, he stays young by selling alcohol at sporting events and yelling at the patrons he serves. Their rage nourishes his soul, and their tips pay for his numerous trips to various sporting events.

As a Vancouver Canucks fan, I realize seasons end long before the team actually stops playing actual games. (I rely on the Packers & Seahawks to give me my dose of crushing playoff failures.) But teams still have to put forward a brave face, lest they end up lessening their value and allowing some huckster billionaire to swoop in and buy them on the cheap.

To follow this to its logical conclusion, and satisfy the demands of the #contentmonster, I am proposing to look at one team’s website per week during the regular season. My targets will be teams that are on or below the playoff bubble, looking at how their social media is playing up a facade of credibility in the team’s direction, despite being laughably out of touch with reality. How a team views its website, Facebook & Twitter is how they probably view their direction and fanbase.

Since everybody starts the season 0-0 (or 0-0-0 if you’re Marvin Lewis), let’s go after the lowest fruit.

Even before the season starts, Google uses the alphabet to start the Browns in 3rd place.

The Browns are such a mess, their social media should be an exercise in marketing programs about how not to #brand a team. Their homepage

just oozes…confidence (?) they are fielding a .500 team.

They rightly pump the tires on DeShone Kizer, trying to get the fans to buy into the latest name on the back of a QB jersey.

They finally retired this one after the Cavs won a title. Not the Browns…THE CAVS!

Also, it helps get the last vestige of Brock Ostweiler stink off the team.

Now, I took that pic of the Browns website Wednesday afternoon, before the news about Myles Garrett came out. They’ve since added just a byline about it:

So, you’d think that it’s just a mild sprain, and not what PFT calls a “high ankle sprain, and the team will update his status in a few weeks.” Rapoport is saying it’ll be at least 4-6 weeks, so plenty of time for them to be well out of playoff contention. Because why panic when you broke the #1 pick four days before the start of the season? It’s not like they were trying to make the playoffs!

Again, to steal from PFT, “even when things are looking promising for the Browns, the Browns-ness of their situation will not subside.”

But at least they can control their home page. Their Facebook page on the front is what you’d expect from a team trying to portray a sense of competency

But lurking below the surface is a cesspool of yokels complaining about players taking a knee & reminding them about the good cops do for others AND THEM!

The best response to these idiots actually came from the Browns Twitter feed,

which is otherwise a not-dissimilar cesspool of yokels I’d recommend not reading.

But some ‘fun’ was achieved on Thursday, carefully hidden below some guffaws courtesy of Joe Thomas, when the news came out that the Browns cut safety Calvin Pryor for fighting a teammate in practice.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE?! BOY, MYLES SURE DOES LIKE HIS BACON!11!!1 Oh yeah, we also got rid of another Pryor.

So now the Browns are short a DL and a safety going into Week-1. [Insert “everything’s fine” meme here.] Feel free to pick their opponent in any suicide or eliminator pool you enter (if you hadn’t already).

By the way, WHY IS JOE HADEN STILL ON THEIR PAGE?! I realize he’s a popular player, but they cut him last week, and he’s now on the Steelers. Yesterday’s picture (up above) had Joe Haden wearing his Florida uniform in his Twitter handle. Today’s picture is him wearing Steelers colours. They are literally

advertising people come to their home opener and watch their former player pound them while playing for their hated enemy.

Related

A Canadian man-child of indeterminate age, he stays young by selling alcohol at sporting events and yelling at the patrons he serves. Their rage nourishes his soul, and their tips pay for his numerous trips to various sporting events.

Cleveland is to football what Toronto is to hockey in terms of former players. Cleveland will bask in Haden’s success as much as Toronto will with Phil Kessel (see: the bajillion Phil Kessel segements they’ve done the past two years since he won his first cup).

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